Just What You Wanted Actually
by PhaseQuill
Summary: Chase Collins is on the loose and Caleb Danvers is concerned because nobody believes him. Rated M for some future Caleb/Chase slash.
1. Caleb's Sense of SelfDefeat

Caleb Danvers sighed as his sleek, silver Mustang GT 2006 pulled up to his home late that night. His surprisingly sunny day had been spent sadly indoors convincing rescue crews, news crews, police officers, Sarah and even himself that he was not crazy. Chase Collins had disappeared into the fire, that much he knew for certain, but nobody else seemed inclined to believe him when he warned that the warlock would be back again. After the firemen discovered nothing in the burnt wreckage of the old Putnam Barn he knew that somehow Collins had escaped. But what he believed and what other people believed turned out to be decidedly different.

Sarah, she wanted to believe him, but he could just tell by the look in her eyes that she was uncertain of what to believe. Collins had rendered her unconscious and she had been oblivious for the duration of the fight, so she had not seen what had transpired. She was of no help to him when it came time to tell her side of the story

"I'm just saying that it sounds a little peculiar to me, Caleb." Sarah's concerned voice echoed in his mind, and he shook his head wearily to clear the cobwebs of old wounds from off his shoulders. He was so tired that all he wanted to do was sleep, but something felt amiss.

Caleb frowned up at the darkened windows of his oversized, eyesore of a home. His mother wasn't waiting up for him tonight? Normally, his mother kept the place lit up like a Christmas tree, truly the eyesore then with all those brightly illuminated windows, but now the place looked dark and gloomy. Yes, it looked just plain wrong without the numerous glow of a dozen, or more so, lamps tossing light down to spangle the pond in the front yard with thousands of twinkling stars.

Idly he wondered if his mother had gone off to bed already and sighed once again. He was a bad son, a thoughtless, careless, forgetful son, or so she would tell him time and time again. She would harp about how he really should have called ahead, let her know that he coming home so late. Not that ten o'clock in the evening was late for her though. Usually she slept the day away and spent her nights drinking and smoking till dawn. Now that he was so close, he debated calling her on his cell phone so that she wouldn't be afraid when he came in but ultimately he decided against it. It would be far better for him to not to awaken her, if he was lucky he could even sneak up to his bed without having his presence detected. After everything that had happened in these past few days he decided to try, and parked the car as soundlessly as possible.

He crept up to the house and noiselessly popped the front door lock by utilizing his power for keyless entry so he would have the musical jingling of keys and the scrape of metal on metal giving him away. So far so good, his mother's shrill voice was silent. Navigating through darkened hallways he sensed something, and knew, knew that something was different tonight. No, something was wrong. His mother was not passed out on the living room couch or in her chair, or even lying sprawled out upon the floor. Even more suspicious, her ashtray was pristine, not a single cigarette butt marring its crystal surface.

Mother was home, her car keys were hanging off the little ivory tusk of the Central African Warthog so she was definitely here. Thankfully he didn't have to go tearing off into town only to find her stumbling about in a bar. Strangely, every time she went she always left a light on for him. Upon further inspection of the room he deduced that not one single crystal glass was missing from the shelf, and she usually plowed through those. One separate glass for each brand of liquor she consumed. Each carefully crafted crystal glass was sitting in its designated spot sparkling away under the fall of artificial light.She had not been drinking tonight? But his mother drank every night.

There was also a strange, unfamiliar scent in the air, floral and feminine, like roses, no, perfume? His mother never wore perfume anymore. Every night for nearly the past ten years his mother's routine had been the same, drink, smoke cigarettes, and drink some more. This had held true for her ever since...

Caleb stood frozen, unable to move, feet rooting themselves into the floor.

"Mother?" he cried, suddenly bolting into motion, racing through room after room like a panicked rat lost in the maze. A lost and desperate rat sadly seeking a cheese that was nowhere in sight.


	2. Caleb Sitting Quietly

Caleb was frantic as he bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time as numerous nightmare scenarios flashed through his mind. What if his mother was having another bout with depression? What if this wasn't just another little episode that would end with him picking her unconscious body up from off the floor and tucking her into bed with a spoonful of stomach easing Mylanta? What if it was something far worse and much more terrible?

He couldn't even remember if she had been taking her medication these past few days. He had been so caught up in his own troubles that he had forgotten to check in on her. Quickly he made a right turn when he reached the landing and found her room terrifyingly empty. All the bathrooms on the second floor too were frustratingly vacant, and that was when Caleb nearly lost his mind. He collapsed to the floor and clutched his head between his hands and almost on accident he looked down the stairwell and out the back window where he saw a single lone light on in the large garden behind their house. With nowhere else to turn Caleb ran towards that one beacon of light, and as he ran to it, he kept on tripping over the damnedest things, shoes, rugs, his own feet as if something were trying to slow him down and saying no, don't go in the garden.

He rushed out back and scanned the rows of almost dead foliage, the bitter cold of early September frost had snapped all the flowers and they sullenly stood with broken necks as silent Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture spectators. Caleb looked up from the assembly of frozen fuschia and saw a lone figure sitting half slumped over in the great wooden swing which hung from the lofty branches of an old magnolia tree that his great, great grandfather had planted here over one hundred years ago.

"Mother!" he cried, then after forcing himself to move, he ran to her side. Yes, it was his mother, and as he approached he noticed that she was wearing the long black evening gown from the few pictures he had seen of her and his father together. This was not what he had expected, he had thought that when he had finally found her she would just be her unfair self and cruelly say that he had forgotten her. What he saw now was entirely different and he almost felt guilty.

Caleb backed up a few paces, to take it all in he supposed, or maybe even to cower away in fear and uncertainty of the unknown. His mother's hair was swept up in a complex series of coffee colored swirls and piled atop her head so a cascade of dark curls could fall down and frame her beautiful face. She looked younger than he could ever recall from his childhood, makeup perfectly painted on her face, lipstick, foundation, eye shadow. She looked professionally painted to perfection and glamorous, like some silver screen starlet from days past.

Yes, she was all done up from head to like she was just heading out for a date. Caleb looked into her listless eyes and exhaled out a deep sigh of relief. His mother had never been well, not since his father had left. The day his father had walked out the door his mother, in a sense, had left him too, and things were never the same again. But now, now his mother was all right again. Everything was going to be better now.

His mother had been very sick, not just addiction, but multiple mental disorders as well, and Caleb had known that she would never be cured of them. Wherever he went, he had always carried a heavy stone of worry for her around his neck and he blamed himself almost as much as she liked to blame his father, no, blame their "Power." Now that weight of worry was finally lifted because his father had finally made good on his last promise to her. That he would return to her someday, and true to his word he did, but when he left this time? He took her with him.

No more late nights filled with drinking, no more carrying her unconscious, intoxicated body upstairs, no more rushing home from school and swim meets to care for her. No more maniac or depressive episodes. No more midnight excursions to the liquor store or panic filled rushes at neck breaking high speeds to the hospital for food, alcohol, arsenic, she said that it was an accident, poisoning. Wherever she was now, she was going to be okay.

A thick, blanketing feeling of, nothing, clogged in his throat. At least, it sorta felt like nothing. Nothing, like he was losing all the things that had defined him, everything that made him who he really was on the inside and if it hurt, the pain was no more than an eraser moving blindly across scribbled words on a page. He had always thought that he would feel more┘

As he sat heavily down on the swing beside his mother, Caleb's arm mechanically wrapped around her cold shoulders and he waited. He waited for the sadness to sting in his eyes, waited for the pain to brew in his heart, waited for the ache of loneliness to eat him alive. He sighed when a lifeless head rolled onto his shoulder but no sadness followed. Another sad sigh escaped his lips as he numbly stared up at the stars twinkling in the sky above him, for he really could not bring himself to feel anything else.


	3. Caleb Still Not Crying

Dreary weather, that's what he encounter while he waited, and hours later brought no better for the coroner who carted his mother's corpse away. Hazy head and mixed up mind, all Caleb's thoughts could fixate upon was the badge the coroner had flashed him before entering his home. He tried to say something to the man, a small greeting, maybe a short explanation, little bits of nonsense wording which he himself could not comprehend let alone the man.

That damn man, he was one year older than his father would have been and there he was with nary a wrinkle. Eighteen years old and Caleb was the one who was constantly obsessing in the mirror in search of premature age lines. Thinking about the reality of this and he was enraged, but only for one moment before his apathetic disorder manifested itself again.

Silence spread out between them like a plague killing off all which tried to break its hold over them. The man had shrugged his shoulders and the confusing part was that after all he had seen and experience that night needed no explicit explanation. And Caleb's lack of emotion was cited as nothing more than a clerical oversight on his part, a small trifle that was nothing to be too worried about. Caleb found himself wondering absentmindedly one thing, why? Why wasn't he freaking out over this life-shattering event? He was suddenly engulfed by ludicrous, suffocating confusion and frustration. Was he in shock, or did he truly just not care? Maybe it was a combination of the two? Not even Caleb knew the truth

After everyone had left, Caleb went out into the garden again and sat back down on the same swing to silently stare at his cell phone. Pogue, he would probably be the best person to call first. No, Caleb bitterly shook his head. Parry would only expect him to be the one whom was called first. Honestly he could call Reid or Tyler first and it wouldn't matter, just as long as he told him that he was the first person all would be right in the punitive world of one Pogue Parry.

"Tired?" A voice softly asked him, words spoken tiredly, ruefully and Caleb was on his feet following the sound without hesitation, the tiny hairs at the back of his neck standing on end.

'Chase?" Caleb pushed through the darkness and saw the warlock standing there, dressed in dark blue jeans paired with a simple black shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Both of his eyes were blackened, literally, dark bruises swept under his eyes and gave him the appearance of a raccoon, and like a lost little animal he needed to be coaxed out of hiding in the dark.

"I'm tired. Do you ever feel tired? I'm tired today." The using had drained Collins drastically, he had always looked so pulled together in the past but today he was disheveled and looking in shambles. The crippling effects of their "gifts" upon them, yet Chase's pale face held no malign contempt for him today, all emotion seemed to have perished from his face, all but a soft trace of sadness.

Staring at him Caleb knew what he should be doing, knew how the scripted plot would read, with him fighting to rip Collins a new asshole. He didn't. Caleb was altered, changed in some strange way that he could not define, and he was indeed indifferent about it.

"Chase, where have you been? People have been searching the barn for you. I didn't think you'd survived, even though I spent most of today insisting upon it." Caleb admitted, surprising them both. Something about the way that Chase was standing there with his head drooped down gave the impression of a wilted flower and that inspired some form of compassion from Caleb because it reminded him of the ones that he had seen earlier in the garden. Had Collins been there all alone?

"Apparently I wasn't in there, now was I?" Chase flashed crazy eyes and looked away, then back at Caleb. He seemed to be trying to smile gently but couldn't quite pull it off. There were darker flecks of indigo in his already cerulean blue eyes, and maybe they were looking just a bit too shiny under the silvery moonlight. A frown shaped his face, mouth twisted down into a scowl as he shifted nervously from foot to foot. "Me and you had a bit of a rumble and I lost, but I didn't kill your Mom, Caleb. I mean, I threatened to, but I really wouldn't have done it, not really. I don't think so..."

"I know that." Caleb made a face to reveal his minor annoyance in that Chase would be afraid that he would stoop so low to think such a thing. Ever since they had fought, things had changed. No, ever since he had received his father's power, that's when he saw Collins in a new light. Standing up close he reappraised Chase.

Perspiration formed and drizzled down the warlock's brow, first degree burns making his face appear red and puffy. The icy rain water almost sizzled and evaporated when it touched his skin, and Caleb could almost see the steam rising off of him in vapory puffs. "You look like shit, Chase."

"Always the slow one, aren't we? Yes Caleb, I know that. I should probably call the doctor," Chase agreed quietly, yet grinned pointedly brazenly in challenge. "But I don't want to. I'm positive that if I do make that call there will be a lot of questions and even worse yet, opinions, mostly those that I do not want to hear, not right now, not when I'm like this. I'm dangerous now, Caleb."


	4. Caleb's Conundrum

Dangerous? Caleb resisted the urge to laugh and roll his eyes. Chase, like always, was an egomaniacal drama queen, but unlike Chase he did not care to comment on him out loud.

"Unleashed, feral and attacking anything that moves, eh? Yep, that's about right." Caleb hardened his gaze and searched the warlock's face intently; all the while Chase took it graciously and merely stared serenely back at him with eyes never wavering. "Well then, where were you hiding while you were off acting dangerous?"

"If that was any business of yours, I'm sure that I would have told you by now, wouldn't I?" Chase informed him with a stagy sigh. "Aren't you worried that you will become everything that you abhorred ad feared now that you have 'inherited' your Daddy's power?"

"Stop answering questions with more questions!" Caleb angrily persisted staring back at Chase in exasperated frustration. "Yes, I have my father's power now, but what do you have to show for all the secrets that you like to keep, Chase? Some worthless, soul eating powers and a pocket full of nothing? Meanwhile you're fucking miserable with no place to call home or someone to love you? No one will care when you die."

Caleb froze after the words left his mouth and winced because he had spoken without really thinking and the true meaning behind the words fell on him like a ton of bricks after the fact. Glumly he kicked himself for feeding into Chase's penchant for punishment.

"Stop looking at me like that! I don't need your pity! You save it for yourself because you're gonna need it one day." Chase pressed his thumb against his teeth and looked over the frozen garden overtly bored with the conversation. "I didnt choose to be this way! I had no choice, it was like chain smoking cigarettes never knowing that they can give you cancer!"

Chase was a junkie for disappointment and pain. He was also lonesome for a family presence and had glued himself onto them with pretensions of kindness and understanding. The fact that it had ended so poorly with them slinging energy and martial arts moves at one another like in some cheap chop-socky flick only proved how badly Chase desired something real.

"I know." Chase looked at him with such pain and loss, destroyed and shattered like all of Caleb's missing emotion had manifested themselves in the other boy. He seemed to be captured by agony and then his gaze shifted to the ground and he laughed. ⌠You can be pretty cold too sometimes Caleb, but you're right. Home, if you can call it that, I don't feel like I have ever really had one of those, not one of my own. When I open the door to where I go when I want to hide, I realize that I am not alone, the addiction always follows me."

"If it hurts that badly, why don't you just stop?" he suggested and grinned as it was the other warlock's turn to stare at him vacantly. Chase was animated only when talking about using, energized, alive. How odd. Caleb watched as the older boy shivered, all that sweating that he was doing and still he was cold. His fevers, they were increasing in frequency and intensity, that much was obvious.

"Because I'm addicted you moron." He was ruthlessly efficient in his diagnosis and emotionally detached from the ramifications and reality of what he was saying. "Addiction alters your brain chemistry while simultaneously killing it at the same time. It eats your mind, and then you start hearing the voices telling you that you have the power to destroy the world and to take what you want. You get an endorphin rush while using, but once it fades and the pain sets in? You just use all the more to make the pain go away."

"You understand what's going on with you, right?" Caleb did understand what Chase was saying, Whenever Caleb used it felt like floating on an invincible high. Then after yesterday, after his birthday he finally realized that after using a lot and then not using at all, little things like pain creep in and even the nail beds, and hair follicles hurt. "The sweating, the fever?"

"Yup, it's the mitochondrial degeneration which leads to premature senescence." Chase stared at him with a strange look in his eyes and his face brightened a little. "During the intrinsic aging process," he leaned forward reached out to put a hand on Calebs shoulder who immediately batted it away. Chase shrugged his shoulders and continued on untroubled. "During the natural aging process, keep forgetting that I'm dealing with high school kids here, the mitochondria breaks down over time. Unfortunately, when we use, we experience a million times more energy production than the normal person and our shoddy little bodies can't handle all that oxidization and our blood burns and runs with bleach. Hey, maybe now I can get a beer at Nicky's and not get carded."

Caleb raised a hand and rubbed his face. "Have you ever thought about getting some help so you can stop?"

"I can't just join a support group! Stopping is not an option for me! You have no idea what it was like, living with this, having people treat me like a freak. I'm decaying, even as I stand here my insides are on fire, burning me alive! My body is one giant microwave oven, slowly cooking from the inside out. Not just the outside, but the inside too, my brain is collapsing. Sometimes I can't even remember who I am anymore."

"You could go to some meetings," Caleb shrugged his shoulders. "Addiction is addiction, you don't have to say what exactly your drug of choice is. I sat in on a few of those groups myself."

"Why, because you felt badly for your daddy, or because you wanted to know what was in store for you in the future?" Chase asked pleasantly, and looked at Caleb directly a small little glow of triumph radiated from him once he realized that he had hit the nail right on the head.

"No, I needed to know that he was sick. That he didn't leave me and my mother because he wanted to, but because he had to."

"And you think that was accepting him?" Chase gave him an eager grin and licked his lips and the death of nothingness faded from his face. "You think that going through every day of your life, all the time wishing that your father was a little bit better, someone kinder, somebody more like yourself? Wishing in your head that you could control everyone and everything around you? When you were smacking Reid around for using his powers, c'mon Caleb, weren't you imaging in your head that it was your Daddy that you were beating on?"

"Chase," Caleb warned and saw the world darken, only the world had not blackened, merely his eyes.


	5. Caleb Putting His Foot Down

**Author's Note: I want to say a big thank you to Lil Kitsune-chan for the review and FastFuriousChick for not only the review but for also being made of just plain awesome! Thanks guys! here's another chapter!**

"Can you make me shut up Caleb?" Chase cooed sweetly, obviously enjoying the little show his was putting on. "How about stringing me up?! I know, whip me!"

Chase's patronizing words filled him with indescribable flames of rage. Now Caleb tried to be unflappable in all situations but on some subjects, mainly his dysfunctional family, he was very touchy, and when he punched Chase square in the face he couldn't deny that it felt damn good. Unfortunately it also seemed to make Chase feel damn good too, and the blue eyed warlock grinned up at him with red slicked teeth and laughed.

"You're sick, sad and pathetic." Caleb growled, voice continuously rising until he was almost shouting. His breathing was shallow, ragged and with each new breath a harsher tone issued forth from his throat, until it sounded like he was chewing on broken glass as he repeated the last word once again. "Pathetic."

"C'mon, Caleb burn me!" Chase called out in a singsong voice, voice rising, climbing higher in octaves, his words turning into a child's chant designed to taunt. ⌠Kill me! Make my ghost the boogeyman who will keep your kids awake in their beds at night!"

The thing was, Caleb did want to do all those things. He wanted to hit Chase again and again, he hated him in every single way possible and that made him want to wrap his hands around that pale throat and crush every bone inside it. And he had every intention of doing so as he lumbered toward him violently with fists clenching and unclenching.

"Just remember to tell them everything and anything bad about me and call me the Woods Hole Warlock." Chase sang out and that's when Caleb realized something very important. "Shame my father isn't around anymore because he could tell you some tales about that. Ah, good times."

"What?" Caleb whispered, and the truth finally dawned upon him. He could almost hear his father whispering that truth into his ear. "Your father, he was the Woods Hole Warlock? Were all your ancestors the Woods Hole Warlock? Did your father know my father?"

Chase's reaction to his realization transcended astonishment, his snide little smile slipped off of his face and it went white as a bed sheet as he stared appalled at Caleb.

"I-I-I-" Chase stammered, then paused visibly shaken, tongue snaking out to moisten lips which were almost the same impossible color of his skin save a tiny hint of pink flush. He looked into Caleb's eyes and then quickly away again. Hide and seek, it was like a game that they always subconsciously played.

"Ah," Caleb sagely nodded his head, and reached out to place a hand on Chase's damp forehead. "I see that you really have been reliving your father's memories too. I know more now that I have ascended than ever before."

"You-" Chase jerked back a bit startled and shifted as if to pull away and then pressed forward into the cool palm. When he began to speak again his voice was very low and almost inaudible. If Caleb hadn't been standing directly in front of him he probably wouldn't have understood him at all. "You're pretty chummy for somebody whom I tried to kill.'

"Yeah, well, join the club." Caleb laughed uneasily, Chase's response both confused and irritated him to his very core and the stormy conflict of emotions and thoughts careened to and fro in indecision.

The guy definitely had a fever, but... But Caleb had been raised to be a very private person, for his own protection mostly, so talking about himself could at times be very difficult for him. But with Chase this was not the case, there was an ease to the flow of words from his mouth when they were directed at the warlock.

"You say that I'm the golden boy of the four families?" Caleb reluctantly questioned Chase pointblank. Maybe the words that he was saying now were true and maybe they weren't but all that mattered was how he felt now, and right now he felt that what he was saying was the truth. "I don't have anybody like me to talk to. I hear those voices all the time, the others? They only heard them once, and I think it was because of me. I mean if you stop and take a good look around, I don't really have anybody. The other guys, all they want is a leader, or someone to blame when things don't go their way. Hell, they almost killed me once.

"You have a strange way of showing affection for someone, Danvers." Chase asked sourly and ran a hand through his hair. He was also doing something that Caleb hadn't realized before, he was trembling. "You forgave them after they almost kill you? Why?"

"The same reason why I forgive you now, I suppose, Putnam." Caleb guesstimated and looked at Chase with a sly grin. "Well, come over here and let me patch you up now."

"Look," Chase began and smiled that crazy, but sweet smile at him yet again. "I think you're a little confused, my name is Pope and I don't need someone like you taking care of me."

"Oh, and here I thought that you were a Collins, but my name is not just Danvers, it's Caleb, remember? My best advice for you is to take a very good look around you, know where you are and get used to the idea of being bullied by me." Caleb laughed bitterly, but maintained his calm, emotionless stare. "Now we can either do this the easy way, or the hard way."

"The easy way?" Chase asked and looked at him in confusion and then from the left and to the right apparently readying himself to cut and run. Well, not today, Caleb smiled to himself and placed a kiss to his surprised lips before aiming directly for Chase's square jaw, he threw a strong uppercut and knocked the warlock across the garden.


End file.
